"So full was I of slumber at the moment in which I had abandoned the true way . . . "O Muses, O high genius, now assist me O memory, that didst write down what I saw, . . . thy nobility shall be manifest " Immensely popular, and commanding a larger audience than any other poet in America, Longfellow produced a body of work which skillfully rendered European culture into terms his New World readers readily appreciated -- with his translation of The Inferno one of his most important offerings.

Immensely popular, and commanding a larger audience than any other poet in America, Longfellow produced a body of work which skillfully rendered European culture into terms his New World readers readily appreciated -- with his translation of The Inferno one of his most important offerings.

Many of these translations stand alongside Longfellow's most famous original poems -- "The Psalm of Life," "The Children's Hour" and "Hiawatha." Perhaps his most important were those based upon Dante, which he began in 1843. This second volume, The Purgatory -- with its visions of the Wanton, the Gluttonous, the Sodomites, the Tree of Knowledge and the River Lethe -- is second in the three-volume poem that begins with the Inferno. Smiling said she to me, "Recollect thee now That thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe . . ."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) was America's most widely read poet of the 19th century. Yet little remembered today is the ambitious and laborious project of his middle years: his translation for New World readers of Dante Alighieri's epic trilogy of a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

In "Paradiso, " the third and final book, Dante enters the realms of the upper Heavens, where he and others rail against the avarice, luxury and corruption...

Dante has been called "the Father of the Italian language." In Italy, Dante is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") and il Poeta; he, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called "the three fountains" or "the three crowns." Let those come to us -- whosoever they be -- who, pressed by the management of civil and domestic life, have felt the human hunger for True Knowledge . . . and let all of us sit together at one table -- for the Banquet Written in his final days, after the completion of his masterful Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's The Banquet presents many of his most...

Belonging in the immortal company of the works of Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece is a visionary journey that takes readers through the torment of Hell.

The first part of Dante's Divine Comedy is many things: a moving human drama, a supreme expression of the Middle Ages, a glorification of the ways of God, and a magnificent protest against the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan. One of the few literary works that has enjoyed a fame both immediate and enduring, The Inferno remains powerful after seven...

" . . . .All things whate'er they be Have order among themselves: and this is Form, That makes the universe resemble God." In Paradiso, the third and final book, Dante enters the realms of the upper Heavens, where he and others rail against the avarice, luxury and corruption of ecclesiastics -- and where no less than Saints Peter, James and John challenge Dante on questions of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Dante learns of the creation of the angels, the fall of Lucifer, and gains final insight into the mystery of human and divine nature, in this fitting sequel to Inferno and Purgatorio.